Eastern Wonderland Story: Highly Responsive to Prayers
by Wererat
Summary: Reimu Hakurei, eleven years old, begins her training as the Shrine Maiden of Gensokyo and soon finds herself at the center of her very first incident: one of her own creation.


Eastern Wonderland Story

Highly Responsive to Prayers

Gensokyo. A lost land which time had long forgotten. An invisible barrier enshrouds it in its entirety, intended not only as a seal to keep its denizens contained within, but also to keep trespassers from the world outside from entering.

Youkai, ghosts, demons, fairies; anything and everything that would be dismissed as mere flight of fancy or the subject of fairytale and folktale are here as real as the everyday people who live alongside them, performing their hereditary duties as wardens (and as for the unlucky ones, dinner) to the many non-human inhabitants. They are the descendants of the great heroes who would occasionally rise up to challenge the youkai. Heroes who had volunteered to shut themselves into an eternal prison with the youkai over a century ago.

Time passes, history becomes legend, and legend passes out of memory. In the world outside life trundles forward for the people living there, having grown complacent with the science in which they have put their faith, unafraid of the dark, unaware that the very terrors that haunt their nightmares exist just beyond that invisible curtain, unaware that there is only one who stands between them, standing ever vigilant on the border between two worlds.

On a nondescript plot of land, on the edge of the Great Hakurei Barrier, there stands an equally nondescript Shinto shrine, tended by a solitary girl.

This shine is known as the Hakurei Shrine, and for generations it has been the first and only line of defense for the humans who live in Gensokyo. The girl who lives there is known as Reimu Hakurei.

What she did not realize was that on one day, a quaint day that had begun the same as every other that had come before it, the first of many so-called incidents would occur. And it would all begin with a simple visit from a stranger.

This is the beginning of her story; the beginning of _my_ story.

Chapter 1 – The First Incident

Year 116

First, let me get the obligatory self-introduction out of the way. My name is Reimu, the current attendant of the eternally-destitute Hakurei Shrine. I've been told that my name means something like 'dream vision' or 'revelation' which makes absolutely zero sense to me and naturally leads me wonder whatever my parents where thinking at the time they named me. For some reason the people I know have this strange tendency to explain how their names are written and the unique meanings associated with them even if I don't ask, or care for that matter, so I'm going to assume it's some kind of custom. I'm sure their parents put a whole lot of thought into their names, and I'm really happy for them, but really, give it a rest. Look at the fairies, for example, Sunny Milk? It sounds like the name of a character from some story you'd find in the dark back section of a bookstore you pretend to wander into by mistake.

My only real understanding of the ideograms that represent our language comes from two things, the first being the worn out old books left behind by my predecessors and the second being the lessons from this one girl who shows up at the shrine least once a week. She looks as though she's about my age but talks as through she's a lot older. It had been over a month since I had last seen her, though she never really had any real obligation or incentive to come.

Next, let's talk about the second part of my name, and debatably the most important, _Hakurei_. Apparently it means something along the lines of 'esteemed companion' but in truth it's just the opposite of that. The Hakurei Shrine is a desolate place. Its location in the middle of youkai-infested woods tends to deter visitations by those who aren't brave (or suicidal) enough to make the trip and those who do aren't normally the type for charitable donations. Even fewer people would willingly choose to walk the same path as the Hakurei, for our line isn't exactly known for their life expectancy. Truth be told, I am probably the last of the Hakurei. My mother died before I had a chance to even remember her face and my father, heck, I don't even know if I have one. Well, in any case, not a lot of companionship or camaraderie to be had here. No friends, no family, and most importantly no worshippers, nothing but a broken-down shrine and me, idly sweeping away at fallen leaves from the paving stones under the single red torii gate with a dingy old bamboo broom. There wasn't really any point to the cleaning, since no one would be around to appreciate it, and soon more leaves would fall to replace them - anything to stave off the boredom for another thirty minutes, right?

After most of the path had been cleared I propped a hand on my hip and stabbed the end of the boom into the ground and stood like a soldier standing guard with an laughably undersized spear as I quietly surveyed the shrine grounds; not too shabby for a morning's worth of work. I even considered going all-out and opening up the old storehouse to sort through the… whatever was in there. Or at least the thought crossed my mind until I heard the _tip-tap_ of wooden clogs coming up the stone stairs leading up to my shrine, and I was suddenly hit with an indescribable feeling. It surprised me enough that I almost dropped my broom. I turned, and put on an expression of discontent.

"Where have you been all this time, Ri-"

I stopped halfway. The person now standing at the top of the stairs was not the one who I expected; in fact she was a complete stranger to me. Shoulder-length strawberry blonde, almost red, hair topped with a pair of bun-shaped hair ornaments, a simple white dress with a solid black panel in the front, and over that had been embroidered a golden vine-like pattern. Still, the one feature that stood out the most above the rest was her arms. One was wrapped up to her sleeve with a white linen bandage. The other was clapped with an iron shackle.

"Can I help you with something? Did you lose your way or something?" I wasn't going to hold my breath and expect that this lady had actually come here by choice. Color me pessimistic, though I generally like the sound of 'realistic' better. The woman looked at me for a second, gave a disgruntled sighed and started walking towards the shrine.

"Um, hello?" I asked again. "You break out of jail or something? Can you understand me? Hello? _Ni hao_? Meat-bun lady?"

She stopped suddenly and turned back to me, looking somewhat surprised. Okay, so she could understand me well enough. At least that would make it easier to figure out what she wanted. Probably.

"Meat… bun?" she asked incredulously.

"Your hair," I said, pointing her head, and in turn the woman touched the tips of her bandaged fingers to her hair caps, as though realizing for the first time they were there. "Don't see many people walking around like that these days, especially not around here. So, do you have a name or do you prefer going as 'Meat-bun'?"

"Ibaraki Kasen," the woman said, lowering her arm, "Though you may just call me Kasen if you so wish. I am but a simple ascetic from the mountains, come to pay my long-due respects to the successor of Hakurei Shrine. Seeing as there is no one else here, you must be Reimu. Young, impetuous… and a rather smart mouth, too, if I do say so myself." She leaned forward until her head was at my eye level, and peered at me through red eyes. "Not unlike _her, _if my memory serves me well."

"Like _who_?" I asked, losing my patience. I felt my grip on the broom handle tighten. There was that weird feeling in my gut again - the feeling that something was about to happen. "Did you come all this way just to insult me?"

"How old are you, Hakurei Maiden?" the question Kasen posed was so simple it threw me off guard.

"What?"

"How old are you?"

I thought about it for a moment. Was it normal for people to randomly ask personal questions like that? My age had never really been a big deal to me before, I hadn't bothered to write it down anywhere, and there wasn't anyone around to remind me.

There wasn't much point anyway. It's not like a birthday had any real importance. You're just a year older than you were before. Big deal, you're that much closer to the day you'll be able to fit in a jar. I counted off years on my fingers before realizing I was one digit short.

"Eleven." I said with a tone that carried absolute certainty, resolution that could move mountains, and then added, "Probably."

"Correct." Kasen said, bringing her palms together. "And it was decided long ago that eleven should be the ideal age for you to begin your spiritual training. And I am the one who will be instructing you."

"Training," I looked at her skeptically. This was sounding fishier by the minute.

"You didn't think that the extent of the Hakurei Maiden's duties ended at sweeping the front porch did you?" Kasen shook her head. "You have been charged with a sacred trust. To protect the balance of Gensokyo, to safeguard the Great Boundary, to…"

"I know all of that already. Who exactly decided this, by the way? And why should I trust you?"

"Your caution is well-placed, Hakurei. With time you should be able to tell for yourself who you can and cannot trust. As for who sent me, well, I guess you could say they are friends you don't know you have. It's rather complicated."

"You're not going to be talking in riddles like this a lot, are you?" I asked wearily.

"Only in the cases where a straight answer would be ill-advised," Kasen said, holding a finger up in a 'matter-of-fact' gesture. "When ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise."

"Funny words coming from a hermit…"

"Some knowledge can do more harm than good when the mind is unprepared to receive it." The meat-bun lady continued. "In any case it's is always best to start with the basics, the complicated parts can always wait."

I sighed. It was probably her way of saying I wasn't old enough to understand or something. Might as well see where this leads, I thought. I mean, it's not like I had anything better to do. "Well then, where do I start?"

Kasen smiled and pointed somewhere behind me. I turned to see the old storehouse I had been half-considering opening up earlier. I never went inside, namely because I'd been told there were a great many cursed objects sealed away inside that I didn't have the skill to handle. My thoughts of cleaning it had actually been more whimsy than anything else.

"In there is a good place as any, I think."

I sighed. I sincerely hoped that bad feeling it the pit of my stomach I was feeling turned out to be nothing.

…

I had only just started piling things up outside the door of the storehouse, and I was already getting tired. Probably didn't help that I'd just finished the morning sweeping. This wasn't some kind of stamina training, was it? There was no way to be sure, though Kasen would go through some of the things that I brought out, occasionally shaking her head and setting aside the boxes sealed with certain ofuda talismans she recognized as 'dangerous' objects and set them down on a special 'quarantine' area, where she would mutter some words under her breath. As time passed, her expression steadily grew more flustered.

"It shouldn't be this difficult to find." Kasen grumbled, crossing her arms. "I know your predecessor enjoyed collecting odd cursed items, knick-knacks, and the like, but this is a bit much."

"You knew her?" I asked, picking up the stone figure of a turtle, turning it around curiously in my hands, only to have it quickly snatched by the nosy hermit.

"We were aquatinted, yes." Kasen answered evasively, looking away. Eventually she shook her head and retuned her attention to the mess. "Anyway, what we're looking for is going to be in a wooden box, polished teak, about this big, with a symbol on the top" she demonstrated just how big with her hands.

"How exactly am I supposed to find anything with an explanation like _that_?" I asked, giving her a dubious glance, and then pointed inside the storehouse, which was filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes. "In _there_."

"I thought it was a fairly accurate description." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Oh well, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to take a short respite, then return with a refreshed mind and a different perspective. None of these things will be going anywhere soon."

"I'd say make yourself at home," I said under my breath "but you already have." As I walked towards the purification font to draw water, Kasen followed me, taking in the surroundings as though she hadn't had a good chance to do so before.

"This place really hasn't changed at all." She said with a hint of nostalgia.

"So it's always been a run-down shrine that never gets any visitors of the donating kind?" I asked offhandedly, using a ladle to draw water. Kasen looked disapprovingly at me for a moment and crossed her arms.

"You shouldn't belittle the place that shelters you from the elements." She said in that annoyingly preachy way I was beginning to loathe already.

"What kind of place do you live?" I asked sipping water from the ladle.

"It's a training dojo of sorts, high up in the mountains. Travelling there now would be inadvisable, the snowstorms can be unpredictably treacherous." Kasen answered after a while, as though she wasn't sure how to properly describe it. "Also, who told you it was okay to just gulp down water from that basin? It's there to purify yourself before entering the presence of gods, not to quench your thirst."

"My shrine, my rules." I gave a sigh of relief, wiping my mouth with my sleeve and set the ladle down beside the basin. I wondered for a while what sort of person would live somewhere up on a mountain where no sane person would ever want to go, only to remind myself I had little room to criticize other's housing arrangements. "Let's go ahead and finish this quickly. It's not as though I was doing anything important."

"On the contrary, you are." Kasen said firmly. "But I agree. Time is of the essence."

I resumed my search through the storehouse, and looking at it now with that renewed perspective, it was far less of a chaotic scene than I when I had started, something like a magnitude four earthquake rather than a magnitude five. I could see from the stratification of items that there was a time when, many years ago things were carefully organized and classified, but as time passed this practice became more haphazard and more warding talismans were put up possibly as a means to compensate for that. It was sort of like looking at the rings of a fallen tree to see a record of its life, only slightly less fulfilling.

"Ah! Here it is!" Kasen's exclaimed with a mixture of surprise and triumph and without thinking I rushed outside to see what her sudden outburst was all about. Sure enough the object she was kneeling over was a small teak box with a black and white yin-yang symbol vaguely visible on the top through years of dust and grime. "It was probably one of the first things we brought out. We must have just overlooked it."

"Perhaps that's because someone took their sweet time in explaining what it was exactly I was supposed to be looking for." I suggested in a not-so-polite tone while the meat-bun casually blew the dust off the box and cleaned the remaining filth away with a cloth.

"A treasure such as this should be in a place of honor." She said, lifting it up.

"It's just a plain ol' box." I said, looking at it over her shoulder. Looking beyond the wear-and-tear of ages even I could tell that the box was very well-crafted with joinery or whatever you call it, but it didn't look like it held anything valuable nor had any inherent value in itself.

"As to be expected." Kasen said with a hint of resignation, setting the box down once more. "The greatest treasures are not held in gem-studded chests. Something like that would attract undue attention… or be sold off for a quick profit. Now, allow me to present to you –" she lifted the lid off the box, revealing a smooth, polished ball, about the size of my fist, resting in a depression in the center. "– the _Jin'yo Tama_; the Hakurei Yin-yang orb!"

"Oh, _I see_." I said, nodding gravely as through I understood a single word of that. "So, what is it, exactly?"

"It channels the user's spiritual power into a tangible form that can then be utilized for offense or defense. Put simply, it is an exorcism tool usable only by the blood members of the Hakurei Clan … which, at the moment happens be you. Go ahead, take it."

Without arguing I picked the orb up and tested the weight of it in my hand. It was heavier than it looked and cool to the touch; running my fingers over the surface I could detect no bumps, no scratches; no imperfections whatsoever.

"Dualism is the basis of all." Kasen began explaining, closing the box and standing up. "White and black, darkness and light, human and yokai coexist in perfect equilibrium. When the numbers of men grow the youkai hunt them, and when the youkai grow too ferocious the hunter slays them. They are two sides of the same coin and without one or the other this land would fall to ruin. The orb represents the Hakurei's role as equalizer and it is a symbol both feared and respected among even the most powerful youkai."

"That's just a little hard to swallow." I muttered holding the orb up to my face. It also raised another question that had been on my mind for some time now. If the Hakurei were so feared, then there must be some youkai out there who held a grudge or two. Why hadn't they come here? It wasn't as if I could have put up much resistance.

"I believe its power is dormant at the moment." Kasen said. "Try supplying it with some of your own spiritual power."

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

"Sorry, this doesn't really come with a manual." Kasen sighed, "I'm afraid that's something you'll have to figure out. As a member of the Hakurei Clan it should probably come naturally to you."

I sighed and looked at the orb in my hands. Could there have been was some kind of special invocation to make it work? If it had, that knowledge might have very well been taken to the grave with the previous Hakurei Maiden. If my mother was still here, I wondered, would she have been able to explain it? Would she have taught me the skills I needed to be her successor?

I shook my head. If my mother were still alive, there would have been no reason for me to learn this in the first place.

"This is going nowhere." I said, hearing the agitation in my own voice. "How am I even supposed to know if it has power or not?"

Kasen seemed to be thinking over this for a moment. "Try giving it a command? It is possible that there might be some form of connection between you and the orb, similar to a shikigami. The last Maiden was able to make it levitate in the air, so why not try doing that?"

I focused on the orb, concentrating on thoughts on making it lift out of my hand and suspend itself in the air. After a few seconds the ball seemed to twitch ever so slightly, then rise up, spinning slowly with a slight tilt.

"Hey, it actually worked." I said, more astonished than I thought I would be. "How about that?"

"You are a Hakurei," Kasen stated with that matter-of-fact tone of hers. "Of course it worked, but I think that's enough training for now. The orb continuously saps its user's spiritual power and yours is not yet fully developed."

"I'm fine." I said, exchanging the orb to my other hand without so much as touching it, and then making it orbit around my arm. "This is pretty cool. You think it can sweep leaves for me?"

"Not that I am aware of." Kasen was starting to get restless. "Put it away for now, Reimu. There are other things I need to tell you about. Matters pertaining to your – what's the matter, Reimu?"

"I, I don't know! I don't know how to make it stop!"

The orb's spinning was growing faster and more erratic, and I could feel my head getting lighter until I stumbled and whatever connection that was holding the orb to be was lost, and the thing rocketed at blinding speed away from me - and through the door of the storehouse. I regained my bearings just in time to hear the crashing sounds coming from within the shed; wood breaking, glass shattering, things falling off shelves. My face turning a deep shade of red,

"Do _not_ go in there!" I heard Kasen shout.

I ignored her warnings and rushed inside, but all I could do is watch helplessly as the orb ricocheted off of every surface, as though I were inside a gigantic pachinko machine.

The orb bounced off of a wall and smashed a table, upending it and sending the items on top of it scattering to the ground and without losing velocity hit a crate, shattering whatever was inside into a hundred pieces. And while this was happening, I could do was stand there and think to myself: _how could something so small be the cause this much damage_?

"It's too dangerous in here, Reimu." Kasen said, putting a hand on my shoulder to pull me away.

The orb hit the corner of the wall and ricocheted back towards where we were standing. Kasen moved to shield me with her body, and that's when I saw the stick standing in the bucket and I was hit with a moment of either bravery, stupidity, or more likely a combination of both as I bolted towards the bucket, grabbed the end of a _gohei_, and swung it at the orb as though I was the player of that one game from the outside world where you run across a diamond, or something. Somehow the strike connected before the orb reached Kasen, and the thing went hurtling towards a stack of unsorted boxes, and sent them crashing to the floor. A small box, no larger than a shoebox, which had been placed at the very top of the stack fell over and smashed open the moment it hit the floor and broke the ofuda seal that had been pasted over the lid.

That was the seal put over cursed items, I realized as the color drained from my face. A knife – what looked like an ordinary kitchen knife slid across the floor, away from the avalanche of boxes and came to a rest. For a moment I thought I could make out what looked like flakes of dried blood on the blade, but then told myself it must have been a trick of light and shadow.

Almost at once I felt all the warmth flee the room as something dark and cloudy leaked from the knife and rose into the air like smoke from burning leaves. It swirled and churned and coalesced into a great black cloud, which gradually took shape as I stood there, transfixed. I realized before long that the cloud was taking the shape of a human figure; a woman with long emerald green hair and eyes, clad in long cyan blue robes. Unlike the rest of her body, her legs had not quite formed, and ended with a wispy tail. When it was all over she stretched her arms out and yawned terribly.

"_Sonovabitch, _I'm stiff," she complained, cracking her knuckles loudly, then pushed on her neck from either side, causing it to crack sickeningly. "_Ahhhh_, smell that fresh air! Yeah, that's the scent of freedom, baby! _Gyahahaha_!"

She began laughing hysterically until her eyes fell upon me. At that moment the laughing stopped and the temperature in the room suddenly rose. The woman's eyes turned blood red, and her hair stood straight up like a cat that had been trapped in a corner, and all around us the sound of thunder rumbled through the air as electricity sparked and crackled, bouncing through the room.

"YOU!"

"W, what about me!?"

"BECAUSE…. OF. …YOU!"

"I, I didn't…! I… what…?"

My mouth was trying to form words, but my brain didn't know what to say. All I could do was stand there while she glared down at me.

"Vengeful spirit from Hell," Kasen suddenly shouted, dashing forward, placing herself directly between the woman and me, her bandaged hand outstretched like a shield. "If you so much as lay a finger on this girl, I swear I'll…!"

At that precise moment the Yin-yang Orb ricocheted off the wall and careened towards me, and acting entirely out of instinct I took a swing at it with the gohei that I realized was still in my hand. It swerved past Kasen's head and struck the green-haired apparition straight in the center of her head, knocking her head back with the loudest crack so far.

For a few moments nothing happened; the air was absolutely still. Even the sound of thunder had subsided. Then, the woman slowly lifted her head back up, a nasty red welt on her forehead.

"_That_... _hurt… you little bint!"_

The green-haired apparition lifted her arm above her head, and a dark, smoky shape began to form within her hand, long and narrow. Before long I realized it was a staff, like the kind a wizard or something would carry, with the shape of a crescent moon at the tip. She swung the tip down, aiming it at us and sneered.

"And this is for locking me up in that forsaken shoebox, _Hakurei_!"

Bright light began to gather up around the tip of her staff, light so bright it filled the tiny storeroom until it was impossible to see. The next thing I knew, I felt my arm being grabbed and I found my legs were following the hand that was leading me away from that place, leading me away just before the light became almost too great to bear, and I heard the sound of the loudest roll of thunder I could recall.

When the smoke cleared, and my vision returned, my ears were still ringing, and I found myself standing before the smoldering ruins of my shrine.


End file.
